YouTube Launches Limited HTML5 Support
Unfortunately, this isn’t being rolled out to all videos. You can only watch videos that aren’t being monetized and that haven’t been annotated (obviously YouTube hasn’t implemented overlays in its HTML5 player). Still, this is a big deal — YouTube is probably the most popular Flash-reliant site on the web. The switch isn’t surprising at all given Google’s support for open standards, but it’s clear they’re moving at a fast pace.
Of course, HTML5 doesn’t really make much of a difference once you’re actually watching the video. In fact, you might not even be able to tell that the video you’re watching is being rendered without Flash (you can right-click and look for the telltale “About Flash Player…” menu item if you want to check). I’m running the dev build of Chrome on a Mac and the player is mostly working, though the Fullscreen button and volume slider are quirky.
Image via Justinsomnia